Billboard in Texas Claims Martin Luther King was a Republican

A Texas group has made billboards saying Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, and that minority voters should vote Republican too.

The man behind the billboards in Texas, Claver Kamau-Imani, said his group whose site is RagingElephants.org, tries to court minority voters to the Republican Party, reports Memphis station WREG.

“The use of Dr. King, because of him being an icon in the community, we feel would be most effective. That’s why we used it. We have the documentation to back the claims we’re making on the billboard,” Kamau-Imani says.

Others would question the claim. For example, Republican congressional candidate Charlotte Bergmann in Memphis made the same assertion about Dr. King in a billboard, and PolitiFact rated her billboard “false.”

Dr. King said himself that he never endorsed candidates.

In 2008, his son, Martin Luther King III, was quoted in an Associated Press article, saying, “It is disingenuous to imply that my father was a Republican. He never endorsed any presidential candidate, and there is certainly no evidence that he ever even voted for a Republican. It is even more outrageous to suggest he would support the Republican Party of today, which has spent so much time and effort trying to suppress African American votes in Florida and many other states.”